


Wake Me Up

by Hectopascal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, AU, Alternate Universe, Blood, Brainwashing, Cannibalism, Dark, Dubious Morality, Everything's Awful, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gore, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Metaphors Everywhere, Murder, Pseudo-Incest, Serial Killers, Somebody Do Something, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2017-12-24 23:03:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hectopascal/pseuds/Hectopascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham may not be the most stable of children or the most popular, but he can function perfectly well. At least, he could. Until his mother's psychiatrist becomes his new step-father and Will's unique type of perception turns him from a shy loner into a prize beyond value.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into Hannibal fic, and certainly a rather interesting beginning I must say. Right, here I am, manufacturing incest where none exists because...well, frankly, because I thought it might be fun (and by fun, of course, I mean Hannibal shreds Will's sanity like a combine with an attitude problem). I meant this to be a one-shot but that failed entirely and now there are chapters. Joy.

It was probably a bad idea, sitting in his mother’s kitchen (not really his mother’s, they have a cook who smiles and pats him on the head and slips candies into his bag lunch) and watching the man who his mother already has notions about being his new father.

Will knows that when he does the _thing_ it ends badly, with dreadful dreams and funny looks and too many nights spent staring into the dark thinking and seeing things he would rather not think and see, but he does it anyway.

He closes his eyes and breathes deep, hears the blood pump sluggishly through his veins and his heart, his baseline, pound in his ears and Will slips out of his body and into the mind of the man introduced as Hannibal Lector, the psychiatrist.

It’s bright when he opens his eyes, clinical, impersonal, the glare of florescent lighting and the aroma of disinfectant coloring everything like a dyed lens. His baseline slows and holds constant. Will looks and he _sees_.

He is a man who has killed before, will kill again, not because of irrepressible, uncontrolled (ugly) urges but because he wants to therefore he shall. He is the purest kind of sociopath, the kind who sees nothing wrong with his actions, finds them enjoyable, and hides them only because society dictates he must though he flaunts them in the face of the ignorant and feels a private pleasure.

He kills with the utmost practicality and in such a way that it might be described as humane except he really couldn’t care less about piffling matters like humanity. It is simply easier and less messy to subdue the prey quietly, painlessly, except, of course, when he feels otherwise and wants it to last, wants them to _hurt_ because he can make them, because it’s fun and they deserve it.

He is not arrogant and not humble, he is what he is and he will never aspire to be anything but. Something else is in his soul…something that comes with the scent of heady spice that makes his mouth water. The feel of meat sliding down his throat, lesser creatures good for nothing else than to be designated simply food, and washed away with a swallow of something rich and aged…wine? Yes, that’s it.

He likes the fine things, the luxury in life, the art, the beauty in the world wherever it may be found in clothes or nature or animals or paint or even (food) people. There are few things are truly lovely and these he covets for his own because he can appreciate them like hardly any can, can love them deeply with his very soul.

He will marry this woman standing behind him, not because she is one of the pieces he would like to collect—she is plain despite her face and body that was shaped under a surgeon’s scalpel and expensive dress, she fades into the background of the world as he sees it—but because through her he finds access to something that otherwise would have been beyond his reach, this is her purpose. This thing he will possess, no matter the obstacles or effort involved, and as soon as he has it she will become worthless.

This is his (my) design.

“Will,” his mother says chidingly and he jerks and fixes his gaze down at the table. In his lap his hands are trembling and Will cannot tell from what and that frightens him more than he can reveal to anyone.

“Will,” she says again, this time sharply, more pointed, the voice she gets when he drifts off and sees (thinks, feels) things that would land him in the loony bin faster than he could say ‘But, Mom—’

Will looks up and at the wall of lacquered wooden cabinets behind Hannibal Lector’s head. He does not want to make eye contact, avoids it whenever possible. He licks his lips nervously and says in a husky voice that is remarkably even, “Pleased to meet you Mister Lector.”

Please go far away and stay there, he doesn’t add.

“Honey,” his mother says sickeningly sweet, still in the voice that bites and screams _be normal, why can’t you just do this one thing so you don’t ruin this for me?_ , “remember we discussed this. Hannibal here is a doctor.”

Will’s hands fist and he says, “Pleased to meet you Doctor Lector.” This time his voice cracks and the man with the eyes that bore unnervingly into Will’s soul smiles. The man is not a general, he never besieged Rome; he is a shark, a predator swimmingly coolly among the population of his chosen prey with an engraved invitation. Will thinks he may be sick.

“And I am pleased to meet you, William,” Hannibal says, calling him by his first name, the antiquated and outdated brand burned into his skin so deep it scarred. Hannibal is reaching into his body, tracing the line of the scars and Will cannot be in the same room with him any longer. His stomach is roiling, his neck hairs are standing at attention, and he’s broken out in a cold sweat.

Someone will notice that something is wrong, that one principle Will always, always followed—make sure no one notices—is compromised and he has to leave before his mother (who will not care, isn’t really an issue, but could have him locked up) sees or infinitely worse Hannibal (no, no, no, Will doesn’t want that man getting inside his head, no sir, no way) gets an inkling of what Will is.

“Excuse me,” he says and shoves himself back from the table, getting to his feet and making for the door, praying to whatever gods would listen that his knees don’t give out before he gets there, up the stairs, and into his bedroom behind a door that locks.

“William Graham,” his mother starts and Will freezes in the doorway, his legs quivering along with his lunch. Please, please, please, he thinks.

“Let the boy go,” Hannibal says and Will’s insides turn to ice and water all at once.

His mother sighs and as Will steps across the threshold, “and William? You may call me Hannibal if you wish.”

Will manages a nod, carefully not looking back into the kitchen, and flees. He doesn’t want to see the average man with the slight accent in the suit anymore, not when he looks and thinks there should be something different in his place, not a “he” but an “it” with a heart locked away behind doors chained shut and a machine for a brain.

An utterly efficient, unnatural, beautiful machine.

He doesn’t throw up, Will only dry heaves twice in the waste bucket in his room. He counts it as a victory because he knows the insidious root he felt today will dig deeper, much deeper (“Call me Hannibal, William”) before it is through.

~.~

Will tries to warn his mother away from the doctor who is suddenly always finding excuses to pop by just to check up on them (Hannibal actually says he is there to check on “her,” but he looks at Will and smiles when he does, like they are sharing a marvelous inside joke). He fails.

Will begins to stay out of sight when he hears the doctor’s car coming up the drive, finds new places to squeeze into: closets, cleaning cabinets, under beds, behind sofas, and sometime in plain sight, hoping to be overlooked. Somehow, Hannibal always manages to catch his eye before he leaves again with a promise to come back. One time, he winks. That time, Will does throw up.

No one sees Hannibal for what he is. The cook likes him (which causes Will to seriously call into question her intelligence, even with the continuing bribes of chocolate), the neighbors like him (they call him “that nice man” and tell his mother how lucky she is), and his mother, obviously, likes him far more than she should.

Will says something about professional ethics, and she makes him sit in an uncomfortable chair and listen to her tell him about honest love and how it transcends mere labels like doctor and patient, how it can fix anything, has even made her consider a stable relationship and Will had best get used to the idea because he was going to be seeing a lot more of Hannibal from now on. For once, she is as good as her word.

Hannibal comes over for dinner, takes his mother out for brunches, charity galas, and evenings at the opera. He is the perfect gentleman. Will is more careful than usual to not look his mother in the eye, for fear of what he might see, what he might feel. All the while, Hannibal is creeping closer, ever closer, into their lives.

It isn’t going to end any other way but one, Will knows after spending a terrible night back in Hannibal’s head out of necessity and a sense of self-preservation. Hannibal Lector is a man who plays the long game, has an unrivaled pool of patience he sinks into like a crocodile into water with only his eyes above the surface, waiting, waiting for his opportune moment.

A date is set. Will’s mother tells him over dinner one night casually and Will cannot do anything about it. He doesn’t throw up or even retch. He has been expecting this but the news itself, the confident way it was delivered, makes him nauseous.

Will is in the wedding, standing at Hannibal’s side, a silver band on a purple pillow held in front of him like a shield. He is wearing a tuxedo that has been tailored to fit him, a plain black bowtie, and professionally shined shoes. The outfit costs more than the rest of his entire wardrobe. Hannibal had paid for it.

He watches as the vows are read and exchanged, as Hannibal bends his head to kiss his mother chastely on the lips, as the room bursts into applause, and feels his hands start to shake again as the chapel bell rings and his own powerlessness becomes crystal clear.

Hannibal is smiling again at the reception as he wields a large knife with grace and cuts into the white tower of a cake. Will watches and sees him cutting something else, that same faint smile on his face. Everyone is happy then and there is music and dancing. Will retreats to a corner, half hidden behind heavy drapes, and wraps his arms around his middle, feeling like the only sane person in the world.

Will and his mother go home. Hannibal goes with them. This time he is here to stay.

They are calling his mother and Hannibal Misses and Mister Lector now. Will doesn’t volunteer to change his name (that would be the tipping point he feels, make him _belong_ to Hannibal, and Will would sooner check himself into the funny farm than allow that to happen) and no one mentions it, but Hannibal still observes him with unnerving eyes that see too much.

The cook is fired. The woman she served faithfully for seven years does not offer even a token protest. Will finds bagged lunches on the same place on the counter every morning before he goes to school. There are no more candies, no chocolates.

It is utilitarian: meat, veggies, fruit, grain, and a drink in a chilled thermos. Will trades it all with a boy at school for a soggy PB & J sandwich and a pint of room temperature 2% milk. They both walk away feeling that they got the better half of the deal.

In addition to being a serial killer (which Will does not dare speak aloud of because no one would believe him) Hannibal is also a fantastically good chess player. At least, Will imagines he could be judging by the way the man manages to always be where Will is and his mother is not.

He watches always and forever and Will runs away with as much diplomacy as he can manage. His door is always locked now, during the day and at night, though Will isn’t entirely certain (yes he is) what he is guarding against.

It starts small, with brief shoulder clasps that Will flinches away from, and brushes in the hallways too small for them to pass without touching. With the horror of inevitability rushing cold down his spine, Will pulls out all the stops and throws himself wholesale into years of perfected avoidance tactics. It doesn’t work.

This much becomes evidence when, on a day his mother was in bed with a head cold, Will takes a shower. The space between the bathroom and his bedroom, which Will was spending more and more time in, was, at most, six and a half feet. It was six feet too far as it turns out.

Will hears Hannibal in the kitchen when he emerges in a cloud of steam with a towel wrapped securely around his waist, his bangs damp and plastered across his forehead. At least, he thinks he does. Will manages a single step, sees a blur out of the corner of his eye, and is suddenly slammed against the wall.

His head rings from the impact and he can’t move, a hard body pressing, rubbing, against his back, holding him in place. Panic rears. Hannibal has one hand around Will’s wrist, holds the arm fully extended against the wall, and the other drags Will’s remaining arm behind his back at an angle that is almost, but not quite, painful.

Will’s breath comes hard and fast and before he recovers enough to think let alone fight back, Hannibal’s mouth is at his ear and speaking in that calm, too-reasonable voice of his, “Don’t lock your door tonight.”

And he lets go.

Will slumps to the floor, eyes wide, shaking from the delayed adrenaline rush, his towel loose around his waist. Hannibal is gone, just like that. Slowly, shaking, with pricks of tears in his eyes, Will stumbles the remaining six feet to his door, fumbles with the knob for a terribly long moment, opens it, closes it behind it him, and twists the lock, but the feeling of relief, of pseudo-protection, when the lock clicks home is gone.

It doesn’t get any better when, that night, at eight o’clock sharp, he unlocks the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goodness, you guys are the best. Not much explicitness here, but give it a little time. This is Hannibal, after all.

Will doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t think it is physically possible for him to sleep, but he pretends. He pretends when he hears the door open (squeezes his eyes shut, tucks his chin under the covers, curls even tighter on his side), pretends when the carpet whispers of footsteps, pretends when his mattress creaks under sudden weight.

He pretends when Hannibal begins to speak, quietly, softly, gently, into the velvet darkness, “Why do you think I am here, William?”

Will doesn’t twitch, doesn’t move, barely breathes, and hopes foolishly that will be the end of it.

Hannibal goes on, “I am here because you have been a bad child and need to be punished. I have spoken extensively with your mother about this and she agreed that measures needed to be taken. And as I am your father it is only natural that I am the one to perform these measures…distasteful though you may find them.”

Will’s eyes remain firmly shut but he imagines the gleam of Hannibal’s eyes in the gloom and feels a shudder rack his frame. His mother had been more distant lately but she wouldn’t—she wouldn’t just hand him over to Hannibal like a roast pig on a platter would she? Would she?

“Though you may not realize it, William,” the voice goes on, so steady, so firm, that Will’s conviction wavers, that Hannibal’s words sound like truth, “all of the children at your school do this too. They simply do not speak of it in public company. Do you speak to your friends of everything that happens at home?”

Before he thinks to stop himself, Will whispers, “I don’t have any friends,” and bites his tongue as punishment. He shuts his eyes again quickly but not before he sees Hannibal’s face, open and amused as it’s never been before.

“That is their loss then,” Hannibal says matter-of-factly, “but what I say is the truth.” A hand smoothes Will’s hair and he flinches, “You can close your eyes and pretend it isn’t happening if you like, but it must happen nonetheless. If you learn your lesson, then perhaps you must only pretend this one time. It is your choice. Are you going to pretend to be asleep, William?”

The hand tucked under Will’s pillow clenches into a fist and his short nails dig into his palms. Other than that, he doesn’t move. Let it be over. Let it be done with. Softly, he pleads one more time, “Please.”

“So be it,” the weight shifts, “but remember, this was your choice.”

Will remembers.

He remembers everything and everything after as well because he is a bad child who cannot learn his lessons properly no matter how patiently Hannibal teaches them to him over and over under the cover of darkness in the night.

~.~

Not a chess player, Will thinks, so much as a fisherman employing German blitzkrieg tactics and striking with the speed and accuracy of lightning. Hannibal grabs Will by the arm, digs his fingers in hard enough to bruise the skin under his shirt, and then lets him go off on his way.

Sometimes the contact is gentle (a hand cups the back of Will’s neck, pulls him closer to lay a kiss upon his brow), sometimes not (the same hand slaps a red handprint on Will’s face, teeth bite a mottled pattern on his thigh) but the one thing constant about it is it’s consistency, and slowly, slowly, Will gets used to it.

He never forgets just what Hannibal is, that first day in the kitchen when he saw the man’s soul, and he always feels a moment of hesitation before eating any meal prepared within the house as well as a bit of guilt about foisting his lunch off on the boy at school who has no idea. One thing he can fix, so Will begins to keep his lunch and eat it too. It is delicious, of course.

Will learns through their lessons that chewing gum is a filthy habit, mumbling is a quality of only those too imbecilic to properly articulate their sentences, the value of cleanliness and a balanced diet, the things he can do to be a better son, a better person, how to fit in better among his peers with a carefully chosen phrase or pattern of speech.

Will understands, with what he hopes is minimal levels of self-delusion, that Hannibal loves him in a way that he never loved Will’s mother, that Will is important, and was very carefully chosen. Will doesn’t think he loves Hannibal most days, but he knows how the physical contact, the lessons he must learn, are necessary and how not to find it distasteful.

Hannibal coaxes him away from tears, broken begging, and choked sobs to apathetic tolerance to a certain level of enjoyment. If it is possible to believe that Will looks forward to the short intimate moments between them than that is what he feels though it was at first difficult for himself to accept.

And then Hannibal stops. He gives no explanation. 

Will waits so long in bed that he actually falls asleep. He waits the next night too and the next, but Hannibal doesn’t come back. Instead, with bleary eyes and a sense of incredulity, Will watches as his mother is again showered in the attention of the man she married. Hannibal doesn’t look at Will, barely speaks to him, brushes off his concerned inquires with offhand remarks.

Two days pass.

Three.

Four.

Will slips into Hannibal’s mind and surrounded by the cool balm of logic, understands what is happening. When he leaves, emotion overwhelms him again, the knowledge of this punishment’s true nature no longer a relief.

Five days pass and Hannibal still carefully not-touches him, getting close enough for Will to feel his body heat and then turning away. Once, and only once, he pinches Will’s upper arm and leaves a red mark that darkens to a purple blotch. Will falls asleep while brushing his fingers over the bruise, the small discomfort somehow soothing.

A week.

Nine days pass.

Twelve days later Will cracks and has a breakdown.

Hannibal finds him on his knees in the parlor, tears streaming down his face, all but insensible to the world. Will comes back to himself naked, warm between sheets that aren’t his, surrounded by the scent of Hannibal’s cologne, with a steady heartbeat under his hand.

He blinks and realizes he is in Hannibal’s bed (it ceased to be his mother’s along with all her other possessions the second she said “I do”) resting beside its owner who peers at him with some concern.

“Are you quite all right, William?” Hannibal asks; quiet like he was that first time. It is all Will can do to not burst into tears again.

“I’m fine,” he lies, “I–I must have been tired or some—”

“William,” Hannibal says sharply, “What have I told you about lying to me? Do you want to be punished?”

Will opens his mouth to give an automatic denial and then, terribly horribly awfully, his throat seizes. He lowers his head, as if by not looking Hannibal in the eye this will be easier, nods. Being honest.

A hand so much larger than his cups the back of his head, forcing Will to meet Hannibal’s gaze. To his surprise, the man is smiling. The hand guides Will into a kiss, his lips part, and Hannibal’s tongue swipe into his mouth to take him in a way that is messy, the type he normally disproves of, the kind that is positively filthy.

Then a grip on Will’s arm drags him in a sudden movement underneath Hannibal and he is on his back looking up at Hannibal, likely with the startled look of a doe spooked by a loud noise.

“Would you like to come hunting with me?”

The question is so unexpected it takes Will a moment to comprehend it, another to take the meaning behind it, and another to consider his response. The last takes the least amount of time.

“Just you and me?” he asks.

Hannibal smiles, “Of course. I would apologize to you for my behavior the past days. I had—”

“—to be sure,” Will finishes for him and flushes when dark eyes flash with heat. “I know.”

Hannibal hums, a short rumble of sound, and kisses him again, runs his hands up the side of Will’s ribs, laying claim to everything he touches.

“Almost, you are almost ready, dear William,” his arms are iron bars on either side of Will, no way to escape, not that there is any reason to run, holding him down like a butterfly under a pin. “We will go together soon. I will show you everything I know.”

Will smiles and nods. He is looking forward to this futuristic ‘soon,’ with perhaps more enthusiasm than is strictly necessary because aside from the dark thing that lurked in the depths of Hannibal’s mind, the one that obsessively coveted without reason or purpose but to simply _have_ , there was something else that Hannibal hadn’t shown Will yet.

How to be one, how to join two bodies into a single entity, how to bind flesh together in a way that in Will’s mind is still murky and unspecific, but becoming clearer all the time.

Hannibal pushes himself up so his weight is no longer pressing Will against the mattress, but that doesn’t matter much because Will is still falling down, down, down. He thinks he might be almost ready too.

Things get better after that, much better. Will’s mother would probably be suspicious about the stupidly blissful look her son walks around with, but is distracted by the pills her new psychiatrist has her on.

She stopped seeing Hannibal in a ‘professional setting’ about a month after they married, saying that she just didn’t think Hannibal would be able to remain impartial and give her the best objective diagnosis about her mental state since they were living together. If only she knew.  

Her psychiatrist, a young and fresh graduate from some Ivy League college, is far too liberal with his prescriptions, in Will’s opinion, but as it leaves his mother utterly incapable of noticing anything outside of her own special world, he neglects to mention it to anyone in a position capable of doing anything about it.

He becomes a little concerned about possible side effects the fourth time he finds her sobbing on the couch (not the couch for sitting, but the white, pristine, overly expensive, uncomfortable one for visitors) with a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey (two-thirds empty), a king-sized chocolate bar (half-eaten), and a box of tissues (empty).

Hannibal reassures him over one shared breakfast in the kitchen, touching Will’s cheek, sending a shiver down his spine, and casually reveals that Will’s mother is, in fact, buying her medication from the new psychiatrist, who needs the cash to pay for college debts.

After that, oddly enough, Will’s mother’s health ceases to be a concern. She is an adult after all. Surely, she could make her own decisions about what drugs to imbibe on a recreational basis. But even so, Will makes sure to cover her with a blanket when he finds her conked out and to toss the rapidly empting bottles from her bar into the recycling bin.

Occasionally, when she is so dead to the world that Will doubts even their screaming fire alarm would rouse her; he puts his hand around her neck, so lightly it’s barely there, and feels her pulse pump sluggishly against his palm. Even more rarely, he will squeeze, just a little, to see her gag and cough in her sleep. Only sometimes. Call it satisfying a sense of curiosity.

Will is always very careful. No one catches him at it, not even Hannibal.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Gory drawings as flirting? Maybe? Who even knows with Hannibal?
> 
> Urg, short and late chapter.

Will finds the first of the drawings entirely by accident.

He peeks into what used to be the guest bedroom, but is now Hannibal’s home office, and finds the nerve to walk further inside only because it is vacant. The dark wooden furniture glistens in the dim light and Will cannot help but picture Hannibal working behind the wide desk, an evaluation of one of his patients on the computer screen, his hands on the keyboard moving with slow deliberation, so loathe to make a mistake.

He really has no idea why he’s even in here. This is Hannibal’s space, his territory, but now curiosity (which Hannibal has actively encouraged) and the age-old tug of the taboo are overpowering his common sense and Will finds himself drifting forward.

His hands tuck under his chest in loose, nervous fits while his eyes rest briefly on the certificates hanging from the walls, the bookshelves (filled with books, Will has no doubt, that Hannibal has both read and understood unlike some of those doctors who fill their shelves with impressive tomes on their field of study to bolster their own ego), the black leather chair, the desk itself and its various knick-knacks.

Even then, looking without really looking, trying to absorb a bit of Hannibal’s self by standing where he had stood, seeing what he saw, Will would not have found it at all if not for the color difference. The triangle corner protrudes from underneath a small pile of formal-looking documentation—creamy, stiff, thick paper where everything else is pale, flimsy, and thin.

It jumps with life, and it’s the very oddness of it that has Will pinching the edge of it between his thumb and forefinger and pulling it gently from the stack before reason can intervene and smack him with the idea of just how bad he is making things for himself. Looking, acceptable. Touching, _not okay_. But the damage is already done, Hannibal has an eye for detail, he’ll notice a mote of dust out of place somewhere he frequents often, so he might as well look.

What is it? Another award, a degree or commendation that Hannibal hadn’t yet hung on his wall? The rest hung, gridlocked, in matching frames, columns and rows lined up like military tombstones. But Will doesn’t need to see those, doesn’t need to read the tiny black print and fancy curling letters, to know that Hannibal is a genius among geniuses.

That would be the simplest explanation, but also the most obvious and very few things about Hannibal’s true self are evident at first glance. It could be just another scale in the skin Hannibal draws around himself like a cloak, a first-rate disguise because it’s real and all the best liars are the ones who tell the truth.

Wings flutters in Will’s stomach and his eyes widen as his brain pegs the emotion he feels as _excitement_. This paper, he can already tell, is not a part of any deception. It is a mystery about to be solved, a secret revealed. It is something _new_.

It is also upside down.

Will flips it over and blinks down at a photograph—no, intensely shaded and riddled with minute detail, a drawing—of a girl slumped against a wall, decency retained only by a scrap of sheet frozen in the process of sliding away. Her head tilts toward Will, light hair falling over her face and curling past her shoulders. Her legs, together and outstretched, continue off the page while the back of her hands rest on the floor beside them.

She looked pretty, Will decides finally, and sort of nice.

Even though under her chin an insane grin gaps across her neck, colored hard and black, and offsets the soft smile upon her lips. Even though her hands are on the ground because lengths of pipes have been thrust though her palms like stakes.

Even though, as best Will can tell, dozens of needles jam into her thighs making a pattern he can almost, but not quite, see clearly. The grey of the metal almost gleams on the page, a brand new grouping of stars. A constellation in skin instead of sky.

Even though the single eye that glares out from between the shadowy overhang of hair seems more like a black hole of sucking oblivion than a window to the soul.

Even then, she was beautiful.

It simply wasn’t a human kind of beauty, or one most humans were capable of understanding. But Will understands. He just isn’t sure whether his new perception is a factor of Hannibal’s presence in his life or something that grew inside him all on its own, waiting only for a proper catalyst.

He puts it back, as close to where he found it as he could make it, though it seems like wasted effort because Will knows Hannibal will know it’s been moved regardless. And he leaves, head spinning with the weight of discovery, a notion of an idea taking form, and quickening his steps. 

Will doesn’t find the second drawing, accidentally or otherwise. Or the third. Or the fourth, or the fifth, or the hundredth.

That’s because, one evening, when Will is sitting in the living room in the cushy chair he’d dragged directly in front of the pseudo-fireplace grate, still thinking a rather novel thought from beginning to end, turning it over in his head to see every last facet of his rough, little diamond, Hannibal drops a folder into his lap.

The folder is black, one big envelope, the kind used by businesses with the string-button latch on the front. Hannibal touches Will’s hair. Will feels the lightest brush of fingertips on his forehead, but when he cranes his head around to look up; Hannibal is walking away, having already done what he set out to do.

Will watches Hannibal vanish around a corner before turning his attention to the folder, resting stiff and heavy in his hands. Licking his lips, he untwists the string from the button and turns the folder over, giving it a gentle shake to slide the first of the papers to the slit at the top.

He plucks it free.

Blinks at it for a second, uncomprehending.

And gently puts it back.

Will tucks the folder under his arm and quietly retreats to his room, locking the door behind him (Hannibal has forbidden this, but Will thinks that now may be a reasonable exception to the rule).

Settling himself onto his bed, Will turns the folder over and, with a light and careful touch, shifts through each and every one of them. His expression is calm, his hands free of any tremble, and his breathes come steady and even.

 _The man, crucified in empty space, his innards wrapped in a delicately complex garment over his shoulders and around his waist. His head falls back, his expression slack and stupid in ecstasy. His legs have been cut off at the knees—_ take those away, he has nothing to stand on— _and blood, black and messy as charcoal, drips from where they used to be._

 _The woman with flowers inserted into her hands, thorns protruding from her shapely arms, a choker of vines lovely and picturesque around her neck. The plant grows through her—_ she is a gardener, Will thinks, or was anyway— _and is all the more beautiful for it. Roses bloom in place of eyes, her mouth a bouquet, stuffed with springs of lavender._

 _The man, neatly bisected and arranged in a circle, hands reaching for a single foot, back bowed at an impossible angle—_ he has no spine, Will knows suddenly, an irritating cowardly fool of a man— _the border for a dark, gleaming pool of what can only be his own blood._

And on, and on, and on. Dozens upon dozens of drawings so beautiful, so sublimely captivating that they can only have one artist. Will would recognize him even if Hannibal did not choose to reveal this to him. He can see Hannibal in every pencil stroke, every line and curve and every shade of grey.

It’s a gift. From Hannibal to him. And a warning too because it is a rare day when Hannibal’s actions have only a single meaning behind them. He knows Will was in his office, but forgives him for his intrusion.

And, quite possibly, it’s also a…invitation of sorts.

Will smiles. His resolve firms and hardens into certainty. He knows now what he’s going to do.


End file.
